


scars

by psych0midget (cominupforair)



Series: Soulmate AUs [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, I promise there's comfort at the end, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Scars, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23118919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cominupforair/pseuds/psych0midget
Summary: Nathaniel knew it was coming. Or rather, he hoped it was coming. It was said that, if you had a soulmate, the marks on that person’s body would appear on your skin on your seventh birthday. Nathaniel was still a child. And he hoped for it. He expected moles and birthmarks. Maybe even bruised knees, a scar under his chin or a scar cutting his eyebrow, that sounded cool.That’s not what happened.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Series: Soulmate AUs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1749052
Comments: 43
Kudos: 589





	scars

**Author's Note:**

> oh well I'm not gonna lie this might be a bit OOC because I wrote it while I was super sick, feverish, and coughing my lungs out. but well, here I am with _another_ soulmate au, I hope you enjoy it :)
> 
>  **trigger warnings** : references to past abuse, references to scars and past injuries, references to self-harm.

Nathaniel knew it was coming. Or rather, he hoped it was coming. It was said that, if you had a soulmate, the marks on that person’s body would appear on your skin on your seventh birthday. Nathaniel was still a child. And he hoped for it. He expected moles and birthmarks. Maybe even bruised knees, a scar under his chin or a scar cutting his eyebrow, that sounded cool. 

That’s not what happened. 

His first marks were bruises on his thighs, scratches on his body, a black eye. He didn’t feel any pain, not even when he pressed his fingers on the bruises. It was just marred blueish skin. 

His soulmate.  
  
-  
  
When his mom saw the black eye, she almost gave him another. She probably restrained herself only because two black eyes would be much more noticeable than just one black eye. Her hands were shaking with anger, maybe fear, as she applied concealer on his face. 

She had probably hoped he didn’t have a soulmate. She didn’t have one. Nathaniel had never dared ask her why she had married his father. 

It would’ve been easier if he didn’t have one either, that’s what she said. 

But he had one. He was not alone, he had a soulmate.    
  
-  
  
Nathaniel was so focussed on the strange marks his soulmate was putting on his body, he forgot he was putting his own on someone else too. 

It took a burning iron on his shoulder to remind him. 

He tried not to linger on what his soulmate would think of that. He also felt guilty. His soulmate had given him nasty marks but never permanent ones. Nathaniel instead was peppering his soulmate’s skin with ugly noticeable scars. 

He wondered how his soulmate, the person who was supposed to love him the most, could ever feel anything but hatred towards the person who had ruined their body.  
  
-  
  
Nathaniel was 11 when he fully realised what the handprints on his thighs, the black bruises on his hips and the red scratches on his back meant. He threw up in the toilet till bile burned in his throat.  
  
-  
  
Nathaniel had found out he had a soulmate at seven, he had been on the run since he was ten and his mom was getting the more and more frustrated with his marks. Covering up a black eye every now and then was okay, but Nathaniel’s bruises were increasing day by day. 

Sometimes he lied. He said that he was just clumsy. Mary didn’t believe a word of it, Nathaniel had grown up as a runaway after all, he was not allowed clumsiness. 

Nathaniel was glad he already had to wear long-sleeved shirts to hide his own scars. Nobody paid attention when he binned the jorts and started buying regular sweatpants to hide the handprints on his legs.  
  
-  
  
One night he overheard his mom talking to Dr. Morgan over the phone. 

Dr. Morgan was one of their contacts, safe, someone they could call when in need of medical assistance. They still had to patch up their own scars with dental floss because Dr. Morgan lived in the UK, but when Mary needed the advice of a doctor, she turned to him. 

Nathaniel knew his mother, he could tell that she was calling him in the dead of the night not just because of the different time zone, but also because she was trying to be discreet. He pretended to be asleep and listened in to their conversation. 

That’s how Nathaniel found out that his soulmate bond was stronger, stronger that the other bonds Dr. Morgan usually dealt with. Apparently only one’s scars and bruises were supposed to show up on your soulmate’s skin. Not hangnails, small scratches, dark under eyes, papercuts, acne. 

It was like his skin was his soulmate’s skin, no barrier between them.  
  
-  
  
One morning Nathaniel woke up to the usual sight of the usual bruises on his body. The sight never stopped angering him, but he was sadly getting used to it. 

One thing was new. 

A scar on his left wrist. 

It was only fair, he thought at first. 

It was only fair, his soulmate’s torso must be as permanently scarred as his own by now. He didn’t mind another scar. 

He minded that this scar was his soulmate’s doing. 

He wasn’t certain, but he’d seen enough people with similar scars on their own arms to know what they meant. 

Nathaniel had no idea who his soulmate was. He’d spent the better part of his last years with his mother drilling into him that having a soulmate was anything but good. He had no hope of ever meeting them, of having the chance of ever getting close enough to someone. 

To be honest, he’d just stopped believing he had a chance in life. Full stop. His father would probably catch up to him anyway. 

Still he went for a run, one of those runs that cut his lungs to ribbons and made him kneel over when he was finished, almost heaving from the strain as he tried to catch his breath. His forehead pressed to the ground. 

If he ever met his soulmate, they’d have to throw a pity party for their childhood trauma.  
  
-  
  
The scars on his arm multiplied. One, two, four, six. 

Nathaniel usually saw them first thing in the morning when he had a few minutes of privacy in the bathroom, away from his mother’s prying eyes. 

She’d had a fit when she’d seen the first scar, yanking his hair and screaming that the more the scars the easier it was for them to be spotted, recognized by Nathan or by one of his men. 

Nathaniel started wearing armbands under his long-sleeved t-shirts, just to be on the safe side. He checked for new scars only when he was sure he was alone. His guts twisted violently every time he spotted a new one, making him gasp for breath and rest his head against the cold tiles of the bathroom. He couldn’t make a sound, he couldn’t make a sound, he couldn’t make a sound.    
  
-  
  
One of the things Dr. Morgan had said over the phone was that while his and his soulmate’s connection was unusual, the fact that Nathaniel could see the bruises and scratches literally forming under his own two eyes was literally unheard of. 

And yet when his soulmate bit his lips to a bloodied pulp, Nathaniel could see his own lips turning redder and redder in the rear-view mirror of his mom’s car. He could trace the path that his soulmate’s teeth were following with his own eyes. First, they nibbled at the corner of their lower lip probably with their canine, then methodically attacked the center with their front teeth. Nathaniel could see that happening, feeling both giddy and scared at the thought that his soulmate was out there currently biting their lips. 

And probably knowing that Nathaniel could see it too.  
  
-  
  
A couple of days later, Nathaniel would wonder if his soulmate saw it when half of his torso was ripped away as he jumped off a moving car. 

Weirdly, that was the first thing he thought of when he woke up in a hut, feverish and with a stranger attending to his ripped skin, applying a smelly poultice on it. His mother handed him a bottle of cheap whiskey, her chin jerking up, wordlessly telling him to swallow as much whiskey as he could to dull the pain. 

And he did it. 

Had his soulmate seen his skin turning blood red in a matter of seconds? Were they wondering what had happened to him? He wanted to say sorry, he knew it would scar, he knew it was going to be a massive ugly scar and Nathaniel didn’t want to add another one to his soulmate’s own collection. 

It was not fair. 

And then the alcohol kicked in. He was comatose for days, for too long, so long that his mother became antsy after spending too much time somewhere unsafe for them. So antsy she shouted at him as soon as he came back to his senses, head still spinning. _We need to get away from here Abram, now_.    
  
-  
  
The only reason Nathaniel saw it, the moment his soulmate cut their wrists, was because he was having a panic attack in the bathroom. He’d barely dodged a bullet earlier that day, one of his father’s men had caught up with them and had shot at him. His mother had shot right back and killed the hitman on the spot, but Nathaniel had felt the bullet almost caressing his cheekbone. 

His mother then had driven all day long, only stopping at 4am in a dodgy cash-only motel. Once in their room, she had ordered him to get his shit together and had let him panic on his own in the bathroom. She was too tired to deal with Nathaniel’s nerves too. 

And that’s when it happened. 

Nathaniel rolled his sleeves up and started splashing cold water on his face, trying to get a grip on reality. He was alive, hewasalivehewasalive.

But that’s when he saw it. A new red angry slash was forming on his arm. It was barely half an inch, but it was slowly and steadily getting longer. 

Nathaniel had thought it would be something quick, a lightning-quick slash, just to be done with it. But his soulmate was going slow, sometimes they stopped, but then they continued. Nathaniel was watching the red line forming under his own two eyes and it was his soulmate, his soulmate was hurting themselves and it was stupid, Nathaniel was not supposed to care about someone he didn’t even know, it went against everything Mary had taught him, but he cared. And he couldn’t take it. He quickly grabbed one of the car keys from his pocket and dragged its edges against his skin. 

He didn’t know if it would work, the key wasn’t blunt and it only left a slightly reddish trail that would probably fade in an instant. 

He had to hang on what Dr. Morgan had said. 

Their bond was unique, unheard of, stronger. 

He dragged the edges of the key right under the strip of skin his soulmate was cutting. 

He wrote “don’t do it”. 

It was stupid and he didn’t know if it would work. He just hoped. He had no time to see if his soulmate would answer because he had to leave the bathroom before his mother would get suspicious and start calling for him.  
  
-  
  
The next time he managed to peek at the state of his arms, though, the cut was still unfinished, his soulmate had stopped.  
  
-  
  
There was a law, out there, somewhere, Nathaniel had no idea how the legal system worked. Not when his entire life had revolved around doing nothing legal. But there was law, he was sure of it. There was a law that forbade people from carving names on their skin to tell their soulmates information about themselves. There had been no real reason for this law before tattoos became popular and people started getting their names inked on their skin in the hope that their soulmates would find them. Before tattoos, few were the people who had the gall of carving their names on themselves and even fewer were those willing to get paid to do that. 

Nobody had ever considered the fact that two soulmates could communicate like them. He didn’t have to tell his soulmate his name or any personal information, his mother would kill him if he tried and Nathaniel was more scared of Mary than he was scared of the Law. 

However, nobody said that he could not talk to his soulmate. 

And that’s what he started doing.  
  
-  
  
Using a key was too suspicious, his mother would notice. He’d have to use his nails. When he filed them, he left the corner of one of his nails slightly sharper and used that as a makeshift human stylus. 

Confident in the fact that his mother probably thought he was just fidgeting, he started writing things on the back of his hand. 

In the morning, when his mother was busy mapping out the itinerary for the day, he wrote _good morning_. 

In the evening, as he showered it was a _good night_. 

His soulmate never answered. Maybe they lived on a different time zone, maybe they lived in another continent. 

Nathaniel persisted. 

Usually it was just a _good morning_ and a _good night_ , sometimes it was more. 

Once it was the sketch of his mother’s car. Nathaniel wasn’t sure his soulmate had seen much of it because by the time he’d finished drawing the wheels, the rest of the car had already faded out. 

Sometimes it was just a random new German word he’d learned, something he thought sounded good, something he liked. It was _Mond_ , _Geschichte_ , _Fünf_. 

Sometimes the words he liked were too long and didn’t fit in the back of his hand. He really liked  **_ fünfhundertfünfundfünfzig _ ** but there was no way he could write that. 

Once he’d drawn a stupid little flower next to a new scar on his arm. He wished he’d been able to stop that one, but being a runaway meant he couldn’t pay much attention to his own body, sometimes he only had time to make sure his head was still attached to his neck. 

Sometimes he wished he died before he’d have a chance of meeting his soulmate because he didn’t want them to live like that. His soulmate, though, had stopped cutting as frequently as they did before and Nathaniel was grateful for small mercies. 

Sometimes it was greetings in French, doodles of the pastries and cookies he stole from the patisserie next to his new house near Marseille. 

It went on for months and months and months and years. 

Nathaniel never got an answer, but he persisted. 

He persisted just because once he’d managed to stop his soulmate from slitting their wrists.  
  
-  
  
The next time his father’s men caught up with them, the bullet didn’t just caress his jawbone, it hit him right in the clavicle. Right above his Kevlar vest, in one of the few blind spots he could not protect. 

Nathaniel didn’t remember much. He remembered the shock, the adrenaline making him run, run, run till his mind caught up with the fact that he’d been shot and he was losing copious amounts of blood and he fell to the ground. 

He woke up in a bed he didn’t recognize, his mother’s face was pale, drawn, worry etched on every line of her face. She cried when she saw he was awake, frantically smoothing her hands over his hair in what was probably one of her most openly affectionate gestures. 

She made him promise he would sleep with a bulletproof vest on, which was kind of ironic considering that he’d been shot even if he was wearing one. And then she’d gone out to buy him food and painkillers. Nathaniel didn’t want her to leave his side, but he guessed he would need drugs pretty soon if the increasing itching on his shoulder was any indication. 

When he lifted his hand to bring a glass of water to his lips, Nathaniel was glad she’d gone away. 

Right there on the back of his hand was a red, angry _don’t leave me_.

—

  


Andrew would never admit it.

Journalists would ask once he got scouted by the Foxes. They talked about the phenomenal goalkeeper who had learned how to play exy in juvie. They wanted to know why he started playing. They described it like a miracle, like one of the juvie rehabilitation programme’s success stories. 

But it was not. 

It was all bullshit.

Andrew would never admit it, but the reason he had picked up exy was because his soulmate liked exy. 

It was because of him. It was a him. Andrew was sure of it. It had taken him long to figure it out, what he liked, who he liked, his sexuality.

No matter how many years had passed since he’d found out he had a soulmate, it was honestly still hard to tell where his soulmate lived, what he was doing, what he was scribbling on his hand. It was easy to tell that they lived on a different time zone, but it had changed several times during the years. Andrew had lost so many nights of sleep staring at his hand just to see it. See when his soulmate wrote something on his skin. See his _good morning_ at midnight, Oakland time. 

He hated it. Being hopeful. Thinking that out there, there could be someone for him. That there was someone for him. Feeling things. He hated the fact that some nights this stupid bond was the only thing he could hang on to. He hated depending on someone else, someone else he didn’t even know. How could he, Andrew Minyard, reject, waste of skin, have a soulmate? It must be a joke. Who would ever want him? Who would ever choose him? It had to be one big fucking joke. 

That’s why Andrew never replied to his soulmate’s messages. 

Replying would only legitimize this pipe dream, it would mean that it was real, that it wasn’t just a hallucination, that his mind wasn’t playing games, fucking up with him like it had always done. 

Life was mocking him. Giving him something and then taking it away. 

That’s what he thought when he saw the red bullet wound on his own shoulder. 

Giving him _someone_ and then taking that someone away. Oh it was ironic, wasn’t it? He should’ve seen it coming, his soulmate probably had died before Andrew could meet him. There were a lot of arteries that could make his soulmate bleed to death right where he’d been shot. The images of a faceless boy lying in a pool of blood flashing behind his eyes the more and more frequently as days passed by without his stupid _good mornings_. 

He was dead. 

He guessed he could finally reply, now. 

Nobody would answer, now. 

His chest felt hollow. At least more hollow than usual. He picked up a twig lying on the grass of the smoking area. He let the cigarette dangle from his lips and he wrote _don’t leave me_ on the back of his hand, dragging the twig across his skin and leaving a lightly red mark. It was stupid. It was so so stupid. But it wasn’t enough. He traced it over again. The writing starker now. And again and again and again. By the time he was done, the skin was scratched and there was a little bit of blood where he had pressed the twig too hard against the red irritated skin of his hand. 

When he was done, he hated himself. He hated how doing that had made him feel weak. Vulnerable. Like there was something that could break him, make him beg. He had promised he’d never beg again. But he had done it and he had done it for someone he didn’t even know. 

Andrew hated himself even more three days later when he saw a _did u miss me_ on the back of his hand and his heart stuttered in his chest. 

That was probably also why Andrew refused to reply again. Never again he said. Once had been more than enough.  
  
-  
  
His soulmate, probably spurred on by the unexpected reply, started writing more often. Andrew never thought about asking him his name, his age, where he was. He didn’t care about breaking the law, he was in juvie after all. He just settled for the little details his soulmate offered. 

Not always, some days were mostly silent. Nothing more than the usual pleasantries. Other times it was a river of ephemeral words getting lightly carved on his skin. One second they were there and the next there was nothing. 

One morning at 7am Andrew saw numbers on the back of his hand. 

0 - 0

And then 

0 - 1

It didn’t take him long to figure out that his soulmate was watching a game. He didn’t care and yet his eyes trailed to his hand whenever new numbers appeared. 

3 - 2

3 - 3

3 - 5 

Great. He was saddled with a jock. He yawned and went back to sleep. It was a Sunday, he was allowed to sleep in on Sundays. 

On Monday he asked for a newspaper, one with a big sport section. The warden looked at him like he’d grown horns overnight but then obliged. His thin smile proof enough that he was happy Andrew had asked for something, had shown interest in something. Fool. 

As soon as he got a copy of a sports mag in his hands, he huddled up in his bed, going through all the sports articles, sifting through the results, looking for a 3 - 5. 

And there it was, small, at the corner of the international sports page. 

Münchner Löwen 3 - 5 Stuttgarter Hengste

Exy

Andrew would never admit it, but he started playing Exy because his soulmate liked Exy.  
  
-  
  
Another thing Andrew would never admit was that he didn’t take up German because Nicky could help him with his homework. Or because it could become some sort of code language he and Nicky could use when they needed privacy. Even though that was a good incentive. Andrew started taking German classes and then Aaron followed. He had recently gone through Andrew’s makeshift rehab and Andrew had no intention of taking his eyes off of him for more than two minutes. He didn’t trust Aaron, not when it came to him staying clear of the drugs. 

Andrew took up German because it was one of the languages his soulmate spoke. 

It was pathetic, how much he clung to the idea that there was someone, out there, meant for him. How much he clung to the idea that someone would love him, could love him. Andrew. Andrew who had spent the better part of his life thinking that he was unlovable. That he was unredeemable. Just not worth it. But his soulmate did everything he could to tell him about his life, to make sure that Andrew knew he was there, to prevent him, someone he didn’t even know, from cutting. And Andrew was anything but ungrateful. If his soulmate was doing everything in their power to communicate, he at least had to understand what he was being told. He owed it to him. 

Most of the times his soulmate spoke English, but when he wrote foreign words Andrew started writing them down on a notebook. He didn’t know much about languages, he could barely tell which language was which. 

His cousin did, though. 

One day he went to Nicky and unceremoniously slammed his notebook on the table in front of him. 

“What does this mean?” he asked, offering no explanation, just pointing to the first word on the list. 

Nicky looked at him for a few seconds, assessing, before he answered, “It’s German. _Drei_ , it means _three_. Why are you-“

“And this?” Andrew interrupted him. He didn’t want Nicky to ask. He pointed to another word, he guessed it was another language, but he couldn’t tell which one. 

“ _Coquelicot_ ,” Nicky tried the word on his lips. “That’s- that’s French, I’m sorry I’m not fluent, Erik taught me some words, but I have no idea what this means.”

Andrew nodded. He wasn’t happy he had to settle only for German, but it was still better than nothing. It would have to do. 

“Will you teach me?”

“What?” Nicky replied, confused, probably just not used to Andrew asking things. Andrew asking things of him. 

“German. Will you teach me German?”

“I’m not qualified for that, nobody ever taught me so I’m not good with grammar and rules in general,” Nicky started rambling, Andrew tapped his foot to the floor. Nicky stopped, dragging his gaze back to his cousin. “Listen, if you take up German at school, I can give you a hand with that, teach you colloquialisms and make sure you become fluent?”

Andrew nodded and turned away, having nothing left to say to Nicky.  
  
-  
  
Andrew would rather die than admit that most of the things he’d done, he’d done for a hypothetical soulmate he had never met. 

When David Wymack signed him to the PSU Foxes, gave him a future, Andrew tried not to think of what would’ve become of him had he not had a soulmate. Had he not had someone keeping him tied to reality, giving him a reason to stay. 

When David Wymack signed him to the PSU Foxes, Andrew insisted on two things: he wanted his family with him at Palmetto and he wanted the jersey number 3.  
_Drei_.  
  
-  
  
It was the fifth game of the season and the Foxes had surprisingly won. That might have had something to do with the fact that Wymack had bribed him with a bottle of pricey whiskey and Andrew had defended the goal like his life depended on it. 

4-1, Foxes favour. 

Andrew was mindlessly removing his gloves as he walked into the locker room when he stopped on his tracks. Boyd walked into him, almost toppling him to the ground, but Andrew was staring at the faint lines forming on the back of his sweaty hands. 

4-1 

_ Minyard  _

Andrew’s heart jumped in his throat. He should’ve seen it coming, he should’ve known his soulmate watched his games. He’d written Kevin’s name plenty of times on his hand, it was only natural. One of these days he’d find Wilds, Boyd, Knox, Moriyama. 

But this time it was Minyard. 

And it made something in Andrew’s chest flip. 

He was being seen.  
  


—

  
  
The first time Neil met Andrew Minyard he got a racquet shoved into his stomach. 

It would bruise, it would bruise. That is, if he managed to take a breath and live through the day, because right in that moment he was on the floor gasping and wheezing. 

It would bruise. 

His first thought should’ve been _fuck you Minyard_ , but his mind had gone straight to his soulmate like it had been doing for the last years. He was pissed, pissed that his brain, unlike his body, had no self-preservation instincts. When he was in danger his body immediately kicked into fight or flight mode, but when he got hurt his mind stalled, stupidly thinking about his soulmate. It was just a second, a one-second distraction, nothing more, but Neil knew that he could not afford that. He could’ve died in that fatal one second. 

This was not the case, Andrew Minyard was just a psycho who had whacked the shit out of him with a racquet, not a real threat. 

And yet Neil was pissed. 

“Fuck you,” he finally said.  
  


—

  
  
It was early afternoon and Neil was sprawled over Andrew on their bed.

Andrew’s bed, actually, but it had somehow become _theirs_ when the other foxes were out of the dorms.  
  
Neil was doing his maths homework, head on Andrew’s chest, the rest of his body bracketed by his boyfriend’s muscular legs. Andrew wasn’t paying any mind to him, too busy going through the Russian grammar Neil had bought him for Christmas. It wasn’t fair, Neil was gifted at learning languages, but Andrew didn’t even have to try, his eidetic memory just stored everything he read.  
  
Neil must have scoffed, made a sound or something because Andrew, without lifting his eyes from the book, sneaked his hand under the hem of Neil’s jersey and gripped his hip, fingers casually tracing the ridges of his scars.  
  
_Their_ scars.  
  
It had taken him too long. He should’ve figured it out earlier.  
  
-  
  
First there had been the locker room. 

Neil thought he could keep showering after everyone else like he had done in Milliport.  
  
It hadn’t taken Neil long to notice that it was not a feasible option. 

Not when he found himself waiting next to Andrew for Kevin, Nicky and Aaron to be done showering. The room was silent save for the echo of the showers running next door, the steam and the dampness and the sweat clinging to the white and orange tiles covering the walls. Andrew fixing one of his calculating stares on him.  
  
“Not showering?” Andrew eventually asked, voice flat.  
  
Neil shrugged. “Don’t like showering with other people.”  
  
Andrew’s lips almost twitched up in an ugly grin, “Got some ouches to hide?”  
  
Neil didn’t deign to reply, he just left. The Fox Tower was a jog away from the court, he could shower back at Wymack’s.  
  
Neil realised he had been played only a couple weeks later, when the other Foxes joined them.  
  
Matt, Dan, Seth, Allison, Renee. At the time they were just more people he had to hide his scars from. 

After practice, he was ready to pack his things and run back to his apartment before anyone could notice, but Wymack intercepted him. 

“Where are you going, kid?”, his voice thundered across the room.  
  
Neil hated it, but he flinched. 

Wymack seemed to understand what was going on inside his head. He was used to problematic kids and he had gotten used to Neil skittering away every time his presence was too imposing. He came closer, but slowly, with his shoulders relaxed. In that moment Neil thought he could perhaps get used to it, in time. He could get used to Wymack.  
  
“The showers have stalls, Josten.” 

Neil’s gaze automatically shifted to Andrew. He wasn’t looking at them, too busy untying his shoelaces, but Neil knew he was listening. His hands clenched.  
  
“We got them installed because they were requested by the players, you can shower here,” Wymack repeated, trying to inject his voice with his own special brand of gruff reassurance.  
  
Neil looked around the room. Half of his new teammates were already shirtless or half-naked. No ugly scars, no suspicious bruises, some track marks but nothing worth hiding. He had already seen Kevin, Aaron and Nicky as well.  
  
He hadn’t seen Andrew.  
  
Neil was a pathological liar and he could sniff lies like a hunting dog. It didn’t take him long to figure out it was Andrew who had requested the shower stalls.  
  
If Wymack saw the gleam in Neil’s eyes, he didn’t comment on it. He just crossed his arms and watched as Neil went back to his locker, grabbed a towel and made a beeline for the showers.  
  
-  
  
Another hint could’ve been Abby. Should’ve been Abby.  
  
Neil had never shown his scars to anybody, but his mom. And those who had patched him up along the years, but they didn’t count.  
  
Being a Fox meant that he had frequent medical check-ups and that Abby Winfield had to see his scars. She did not take a no for an answer, but she promised she would not judge, she would not ask, she would not tell anybody.  
  
Removing his t-shirt in front of her was like pulling teeth. Preparing for the pity in her eyes was even worse. What Neil didn’t expect was the sheer shock in her features. It was not pity, it wasn’t _I’m sorrys_ or _what happened to yous_. It was Abby shifting her gaze from his abdomen to his eyes, to his arms, to the iron-shaped scar on his shoulder. 

At the time Neil hadn’t understood, but he should have. She hadn’t been shocked by his scars, but by the fact that _he_ had those scars.  
  
She promised she would say nothing and ask nothing, though. And so she did.  
  
Sometimes Neil wished she had told him.  
  
-  
  
Then there had been the night at Eden’s. 

His first night at Eden’s. Or rather, the morning after his first night at Eden’s. After Andrew drugged him, after Nicky gave him dust-laced kisses, after he paid a busboy to knock him out before he could spill his secrets. After he woke up in a house he didn’t recognize, after he escaped from the bathroom window and hitchhiked back to Palmetto.  
  
His head was throbbing, partly because of the hangover and the drugs still in his system, and partly because of the swollen bruise on his temple, right where he had been punched by the busboy. 

Neil watched as Wymack paced the living room, his eyes flashing with apprehension and anger, anger and apprehension, over and over and over again. He’d give himself a headache, Neil thought. When Wymack’s eyes stopped moving and rested on him, Neil unconsciously tugged at his hair, pulling them down and covering the bruise on his temple.  
  
That was when Andrew knocked on the door. Wymack tried to keep them apart, but Neil knew what he had to do and shifted to German before Coach could stop him. He began talking, telling half-truths that were more truths than he’d ever told anyone before, throwing them at Andrew only to see them bounce on his wall of apathy. Unyielding. Neil didn’t have time to unpack that, to analyse any of that. It was weirdly comforting, but Neil didn’t let himself dwell on it. He kept on talking, spitting words, so focused on getting everything out that he didn’t notice the huge swollen bruise on Andrew’s own temple.  
  
He noticed only when Wymack asked, “What happened to your head, Minyard?”  
  
Andrew threw a quick glance at Neil, then he dragged his stare back to Wymack’s face and said, “That’s outside your pay grade.”  
  
“It’s not outside my paygrade if you’re concussed and you can’t play,” Coach rebutted, but Andrew had already closed the front door behind himself.  
  
Neil had been an idiot.  
  
-  
  
  
The moment it downed on him, the full realization hitting him square in the chest, was during the Thanksgiving lunch at the Hemmick’s.  
  
It went like this. 

Neil was eating Nicky’s mom casserole when red angry gashes started appearing on his hands. He surreptitiously peeked under his sleeves and noticed that his entire arms were covered in scratches.

Thankfully, Nicky and his parents were too busy eating in silence after the horrible words that had spilled between them to notice that there was something wrong with him. Their heads bent as they stared at their plates, ignoring each other, Nicky probably trying not to cry. 

Andrew hadn’t come back yet.  
  
Neil didn’t want them to see the gashes, or rather how quickly they were forming on his skin for no apparent reason. He tried to grab the sweater he had hung on the back of his chair, gingerly, so as not to get anyone’s attention. But Aaron saw him. He snapped his eyes up to his face and saw him.  
  
And he gasped.  
  
Neil had often seen Aaron’s face morphing into disgust, but never into pure shock. 

He didn’t have a mirror to check the damage, but he guessed the red angry scratches weren’t just on his arms.  
  
The gasp drew Nicky’s the attention. He was too accustomed to his cousin’s lack of emotions not to notice Aaron and his sudden interest in Neil’s face. He barely had a chance of saying, “Neil, what happened to your head?” before Aaron grabbed him by the sleeve of his shirt and dragged him out of the dining room.  
  
“We need to find Andrew” was the only explanation he offered and that was enough for Neil. He grabbed his racquet and followed Aaron upstairs.  
  
What happened later then was still a blur in Neil’s mind.  
  
Kicking the door open, seeing Drake draped over Andrew, the skin, the blood, Aaron killing Drake with an Exy racquet, Andrew’s manic laughter. Andrew knotting his shaking fingers into both Aaron and Neil’s hair and dragging them close, closer, till their heads were nothing but barely an inch apart. His gaze shifting frantically from his twin to Neil over and over again, assessing, checking, seeing.  
  
“Did he touch you?” he asked, still shaking, not giving a damn about what had just happened to him. His focus solely on them.  
  
Aaron barely murmured a “it’s not my blood, Andrew”, still staring at his twin like he’d never seen him before, like the world had brusquely tilted sideways and he had lost his footing, he was falling and falling and falling.  
  
Neil didn’t say a thing. 

He just watched Andrew’s naked torso. The iron-shaped scar on his shoulder, the bullet wound on his clavicle, the ugly lacerations over his stomach. The same exact scarred skin Neil saw every day on his own body. He took in Andrew’s face, the bruises forming on his forehead, the scratches on his neck, on his chest, on his arms. All identical to the scratches that had covered Neil’s skin when he was a kid and his soulmate was being regularly abused. 

He didn’t need a mirror to know that his own face sported the same exact bruises.  
  
Andrew Minyard was his soulmate.  
  
Hours later Aaron was waiting for his lawyers on the front porch of the Columbia house and Neil asked him how he’d known that his brother was in trouble just by watching him. Aaron told him that he’d never seen soulmate marks forming so quickly on anyone but his twin, he’d just put two and two together when he’d seen the scratches on Neil’s cheeks appearing out of thin air.  
He also said that he should’ve figured earlier that Andrew’s soulmate would be an asshole.  
  
Hours later Neil pressed Andrew’s hand under the hem of his shirt, against the scars on his abdomen. As a promise that he would look out for Kevin, but mostly as a confirmation of what he’d found out about the nature of their relationship. He didn’t exactly know why, but he just wanted Andrew to know about their matching scars.  
  
Hours later Andrew told him that he already knew, that he’d know from day one. After their first encounter, when he’d seen a racquet shaped bruise on his stomach.  
  
-  
  
Neil often rehashed the events of his freshman year, mulling over every single thing he’d said, every single moment before he’d found out that Andrew Minyard was his soulmate, trying to see where he’d gone wrong and kicking himself. He should’ve sees it coming, he should’ve done something for Andrew. Just like Andrew had saved him when he’d seen the marks forming on his own face after the game at Binghamton, choked the answers out of Kevin and called the FBI before Nathan could kill him. 

Instead Neil had just covered Andrew’s skin with scars and scars and scars.  
  
“Spit it out,” Andrew mumbled, his eyes still fixed on the Russian grammar he was poring over.  
  
“What?”  
  
“I said spit it out, I don’t have time to figure out what’s going on inside that little brain of yours, Josten, just tell me.”  
  
Neil turned his head against Andrew’s chest so he could stare at him. His eyes locked on the scars on Andrew’s face, the circular burn marks on his cheek, exact mirror of his own.  
  
“I’m sorry about the scars,” he finally mumbled.  
  
“Don’t waste your time being sorry about things you can’t change.”  
  
Neil closed his eyes, quashing the rage surging through his veins every time Andrew belittled his trauma. He took a deep breath.  
  
“I know, but- I barely have a dozen scars of yours and you have hundreds. All ugly and messy and puckered and badly patched-up. When I was a kid, I thought it was fun, but the more scars I had, the harder it was. And then I saw,” Neil swallowed. “When I first saw your scars, I felt like I was... violating you. You had enough of scars of your own, you didn’t need mine, you hadn’t asked for mine, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair. I was imposing my scars on you, I was marking you without your consent. And I’m sorry.”  
  
Neil was working himself up, he knew that. He was babbling, not making any sense. Andrew’s nails dug into his hip, making Neil open his eyes and stare right into the two pools of honey frowning down at him.  
  
“Now listen carefully because I’m not going to say it again.” Andrew waited for Neil’s small nod before he continued. “It felt good. They felt good, your scars. They were mine. Seeing them on my skin was proof that you existed. Your scars were the only thing nobody could take away from me and they were mine, nobody else’s. I hung on them. Don’t you ever dare feel sorry about them.”  
  
If Neil could cry, he would, but he did not even remember how to, so he just turned around, grabbed the Russian grammar from Andrew’s hands and put it on the floor. Andrew’s eyes were tracking his every movement, his brows lightly frowned. Neil took Andrew in. The ruffled hair, the blonde eyelashes, the white scars on his face, the chapped lips. He planted his hands on the mattress either side of Andrew’s face, telegraphing his movements so that Andrew could stop him if he wanted. He straddled his hips and levered his body up until his face hovered over his boyfriend’s.  
  
_Soulmate_.  
  
Neil stared into his eyes for a few seconds, hoping Andrew could read them, the gratitude, the trust, the love. He cupped Andrew’s face in his hand and traced his thumb over the circular burn marks on his cheek. He hated that Andrew bore his scars, but it was grounding.  
  
And then Neil dipped his head, he latched his lips on Andrew’s neck, nosed along the skin and started sucking lightly right where his head connected to his shoulder. He went at it slowly, painstakingly slowly, sucking a bruise. 

Knowing full well that Andrew could just lower his eyes and see the hickey forming on Neil’s own neck. 

Knowing that Andrew was enjoying the view because Neil felt his body shiver against his own, a warm hand rising up his back and cupping his neck.  
  
“Your neck fetish is not attractive,” Andrew said, but his voice was quivering.  
  
Neil smiled.  
  
“You like it”.  


**Author's Note:**

> I am aware raquet-shaped bruises are not a thing but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
>   
> I'd love to know what you thought of this fic! Kudos, comments, and feedbacks are all loved and appreciated <3  
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